New Guinea at a glance

New Guinea is the world’s tallest island: Carstensz
Pyramid in the Snow Mountains, at 4,884 m the highest point in between
Himalaya and Andes, tops a 2,000 km long cordillera forming the island’s
central spine and most notable topographical feature. New Guinea is also
the largest tropical island on Earth, in size surpassed only by ice-covered
Greenland.

The sheer size of this land and its enormous altitudinal
range help give rise to an extraordinary array of terrestrial ecosystems.
From the world’s most extensive and diverse mangroves, to swamps
and savanna forests, a diverse mix of lowland and hill rainforest types,
through to a variety of montane forests, finally giving way above the
timberline to alpine heath, rolling meadows, lakes, bogs and even equatorial
glaciers, remnants of an icy past. New Guinea is the last great rainforest
wilderness left in the tropical Old World, harboring what is the largest
expanse of frontier forest away from Amazonia and the Congo Basin. Situated
at the northeastern entrance of the Indonesian Throughflow from Pacific
to Indian Ocean, the Raja Ampat archipelago off New Guinea’s western
tip is now known to support the most diverse coral reefs on Earth. New
Guinea: a natural wonderland, above and below water, still aligned to
the grand scale at which mother nature operates.

Whatever the subject of interest, you will find that
diversity is New Guinea’s recurrent theme. The island contains very
high levels of biodiversity and species endemism, boasting as many bird
and plant species as nearby mega-diverse Australia in one tenth the land
surface. Home to a unique array of plant and animal species, including
the fabled birds-of-paradise, birdwing butterflies, tree kangaroos, and
more species of orchid than anywhere else on Earth, New Guinea ranks among
the top biologically important regions of our planet. Its ethnic diversity
is no less remarkable: almost one fifth of the world’s languages
are spoken here by ethnologically diverse peoples, still intrinsically
interwoven with the natural fabric of their environment.

New Guinea is a
fantastic island, unique
and fascinating. It is an area of
incredible varieties of geomorphology,
biota, peoples,
languages, history,
traditions and cultures.
Diversity is its prime
characteristic, whatever the subject of interest.J. L. Gressitt, 1982